While we’re all holding our breath waiting for the House to vote on health care reform, let’s not forget another health care situation. In Nebraska, Governor Dave Heineman is still refusing to support LB110. This legislation would allow the state to continue its decades-old practice of funding prenatal care for low-income women who are undocumented immigrants. The previous prenatal care funding expired March 1, and clinics in Omaha are starting to hear from clients who are scared and considering abortion:

McVea said she has been flabbergasted by the response from her mostly Hispanic patients, who have a strong cultural and religious aversion to abortion.

She said she can count on one hand the number of abortions she has been aware of over the past decade, adding that one of the clinic’s translators had never heard the Spanish word for “abortion” until the past two weeks.

“I just really underestimated how the loss of prenatal care would push so many people into doing something that ordinarily they would never, ever consider,” McVea said. “It’s a lot of fear. Uncertainty drives a lot of women to choose an abortion.”

She added that although the clinic is offering to help the women pay for prenatal services and reassures women that the government will pay for deliveries, the women don’t trust that information.

“We tell women, ‘It’s going to be covered, you don’t have to worry,’ ” McVea said. “But there’s a lot of fear because they’ve been turned down once.”

Last Saturday, I had my first long-form interview on the Shared Sacrifice BlogTalkRadio show. It was more than a little nerve-wracking. The great thing about Shared Sacrifice is that guests get a full hour to talk about the issues that are important to them. The difficult thing is — guests get a full hour to talk about the issues that are important to them! I’m very much an introvert, so it’s rare for me to talk to anyone for an hour straight about anything.

It went pretty well, with one exception. The question of legal policy came up, as it always does, and I had a lot of trouble with it. It’s very hard to answer. I know what’s wrong. It’s wrong that unborn human beings have no status in law. It’s wrong for the destruction of one of our daughters or sons before birth to be considered the equivalent of an appendectomy.

I know what I want. I want social and legal recognition that in every pregnancy, there are two (or more) lives whose needs and interests we need to balance.

What I don’t know is how to get there from here. I don’t know how to get to the point of balancing two people’s interests when we only acknowledge one person’s existence. I also don’t know how to legally acknowledge the personhood of the unborn, in anything remotely resembling the current political climate, without inviting situations like Amalia’s and Christine Taylor’s.

I know what we can do. We can make the case for the human personhood of both pregnant women and the children they carry. We can urge people to consider that when they have sex, they are responsible for the well-being not only of themselves and their partners, but of any children they might conceive as well. We can work for women’s freedom to make all nonviolent choices regarding sexuality and reproduction. We can work for laws that directly benefit both mother and child, such as the expansion of prenatal care in Nebraska.

Beyond that … I’m just not sure.

I would very much like to hear your thoughts, either here or at All Our Lives. What laws can pro-balance people favor to bring about justice for women and children without contributing to the further oppression of either party?

I will be on the Shared Sacrifice BlogTalkRadio show this Saturday, March 13, to discuss pro-life progressivism. If you want to listen live, the show starts at 12pm Mountain Time (UTC−7), and I will be calling in around 12:30. The show takes listener calls, and there is also a chat room. If you can’t listen live, it’s also available as a podcast — just follow the link on the web page or search for “Shared Sacrifice” in the iTunes Music Store.

(ockraz, you had some questions in comments to this post, and hopefully in this long format I’ll be able to explain my views in more detail.)

Do people who say that it doesn’t make sense to be pro-life without believing in God understand that they are at least as likely to drive people away from being pro-life with that argument as they are to bring them to belief in their God?